Hang With Friends

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Come on in, pull up a chair!

Picture yourself spending some time with congenial friends, sharing your lives and pictures from your cell phones." They're curious about that cool game, song, movie, camping trip, art show, or other event that fascinated you. You talk about all kinds of stuff, poetry, styles, personal achievements, relationships, and bad days. You can share your inner child, and laugh together. They sympathetically listen to your feelings about serious topics like politics or climate change, even when they don't agree.

Personal validation comes from paying attention to one another, giving more than you get. Everyone respects you and themselves, despite our amazing range of personal tastes and interests. They'll tell you they don't agree with an idea or behavior without implying you're a bad person or somehow deficient. It's an "I'm OK, You're OK" kind of fellowship, where nobody tries to make himself look better by picking on somebody else.

Nobody here is into mind games. A discussion started with a loaded guilt-throwing question will be deleted.

This group is not intended to compete with other groups on topics they cover but to "fill in the cracks." Whenever a discussion dwells at length on a topic for which there's an existing group, we urge you to provide members a link to that group to continue along their tangent.

A comment is a shout-out, which will get lost in a few days, because the comment wall is just a random stack.

Please start a discussion to share stories, photos, and videos. Replies will pop up in your "latest activity" and a conversation can develop from the feelings and thoughts you contributed. Groups are built on discussions.

Discussion Forum

We've all heard about the Deep Field observations of the Hubble Space Telescope, how, almost on a whim, the device was aimed at what was thought to be an empty, unoccupied section of sky and a long time exposure was taken. What they discovered was…Continue

Canada is a proud nation but not a loud nation.British newspaper salutes Canada . . . this is a good read. It is funny how it took someone in England to put it into words......Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers , 'The Sunday…Continue

John de Lancie is a lot more than just the infamous "Q" of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has portrayed characters as diverse as Clarence Darrow, Donald Trump, and Nazi administrator Hans Biebow, as you will learn when you watch this video. He…Continue

The world is at the peak and tipping point in many different factors, i.e. global warming, monetary growth, insect collapse. I don't intend to be an alarmist and scare people, my purpose is to inform you. Please block me if you don't want to read…Continue

In case you hadn't noticed, we have a mid-term election coming up in three days, and it's more than a little important. With it we can take back at least one if not both houses of Congress from the Republicans and send a message to Donald Trump…Continue

Comment Wall

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I went with my daughter and her family (husband, 2 teens) last night to an astronomy show with 4 telescopes directed to the big display of the moon and 4 planets. People were lined up to see them all up close--craters, rings, moons, etc. (This observatory is only 5 miles from my house--out in the country--"Camp Cullum" by name if you want to look in up--Clinton Co, Indiana.)

Anyway, my son-in-law and his kids are addicted to their cell phones. He had an app that could tell us where a passing airplane was headed. He obnoxiously told us about every one. I was tempted to grab and stomp on his device.

Ditto with my Samsung. The best advice I read was that you have control over apps interrupting you with notifications (or not). You don't need to be beeped or buzzed whenever you can make another move in that addictive game, or whenever one of the people you follow posts a tweet, or whenever your carrier is promoting a great new app you absolutely have to have, or whenever your favorite news site has an ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS STORY YOU SIMPLY MUST READRIGHT NOW!

You might choose to keep reminders to exercise, or to learn another vocabulary word, or whatever... but the vast majority of notifications are intrusive and not really necessary. Would you want a robot calling you on the phone to tell you whatever it is? (Ring... ring... "Hello?" "You've got mail!") If not, it can wait, and you can check it yourself, at your own convenience.

I've kept sound and vibration notifications on only from a chat program I use with a handful of people I know face-to-face. (In addition to the usual alerts for phone calls and texts, and utilities like calendar reminders or alarm clocks that I've initiated.)

And Loren, like you, I am not on Facebook, and feel like I'm better off for it!

I think these phones do have a place, especially for seniors who may need help, but it does not control my life. I am also a late smartphone starter & I really like it for texting with my kids, neighbours, reading weather conditions, news headlines, etc., but seldom for actual phone calls, as I am not a phone person. I don't like to talk if I don't have to.